We're from Mahart where innovation, money and power Collie in Silicon Vallet NBN. This is Bloomberg Technology with Caroline Hyde and Ed Ludlow.
I met Ludlow in San Francisco. Caroline hyders off today. This is Bloomberg Technology coming up on the program. Tesla's shock change of CFO Zat Kirkhorn has stepped down after
thirteen years at the ev maker. Meanwhile, Elon Musk's health is in focus as talk of a Zuckerberg cage fight heats up, and plugging a forty eight billions on a black hole artificial intelligence could fuel a rebound at SoftBank, as the Japanese conglomerates Vision Fund seeks to snap five quarters of losses, and we go live to Lisbon as a key leader responds to Portugal's probe into a European telecoms giant artis the name we are watching so closely.
The surprise story this Monday that we all woke up to. Zach kirkchn stepped down August fourth as Tesla's CFO. He's been at the company thirteen years. He became CFO early twenty nineteen. He is a big factor behind the profit at Tesla some of the key capital raises they've done. The chief accounting officer is going to transition into the CFO role. Kirk CON's going to stay till the end
of the year to oversee that transition. Pierre Faragu of New Street Research currently has a buy rating on Tesla and joins us to discuss. Pierre your reaction to Zach stepping down.
Well, very solfishly and as an analystcovering Deskla, I'm very disappointed because Zach was like an exceptionally held through CFO four analyst, always very very impressive in his ability to provide like a big picture and drill into very specific numbers he could give to give a good sound of what was happening. So the sense of control and understanding of how like the big Tesla machine works at at Tesla was impressive and I'm definitely going to miss it.
It's also definitely a surprise. I was not expecting him to live. He's very young now, as you said, thirteen years as STEPSLA, four years as a CFO, still very young.
You know, a lot, a lot of things he can do with his life, and quite a good, you know, amount of money in his on his bank account because of course, being the CFO of Tesla and going through such like an exceptionist strong stock performance means Zach already got paid very well for his time as TESTLIGHTE reminds me, you know, when their own left Tesla, it was the same thing. Tesla is the company that attracts talents the best.
In the world.
Remember there is three million applications a year. It's also the company that has the most difficulties to retain them in the long run, because that's the company that is making talents very rich rapidly at the same time.
So yes, I think part of the model.
So Tesla's name Vibab Teenager as the next CFO. He's been the chief accounting officer. Do you know anything about him?
No, I don't have the chance to meet him personally. You know that Tesla is very very protective with the time of their executive So I had the opportunity to speak to Zach regularly, not so much to Vibav. You know, he's basically coming from the ranks of Tesla. I'm very very confident he will he will do a great job, and I hope I will forget very soon. My regrets of seeing Zach living and I'm sure ABAVS will be very helpful with an artists as well.
Pierre, You and I on this program Bloomberg Technology have used and talked about the term key man risk, and the thing that we talk about in the context of Zach was that he was one of just a handful of stated executive officers. Right, you have Drew Baglino leading the power in a battery business. Tom ju is now coming over from China. But does the key man risk conversation now get amplified because Zach, who's been such a stable force, is now gone.
It's a very good question.
So key mander is, yes, you can't ignore that the CFO leaves the company the stock comes down. You can't like that makes complete sense. There is like an oportunity risk reflected in a move like that. You never know exactly what's behind behind it. Then yes, a CFO, and especially a CFO with the talent of Zak, is a key man in an organization like that. Now, if you take a step back and look at how he learned,
most likes to manage the multiple businesses he has. He likes to be directly speaking to very technical people, so people like Drew typically then he likes to have a type of either a CFO or a chief operating officer who is in charge of running the shop. And that's a model of SpaceX. That's the model more or less of Tesla with like the no real CEO, but like Zach and potentially term running the business from a financial
and commercial, financial and operational and commercial perspective. And so that model, once again is extremely resilient as long as you have this capability of harnessing talents and bringing them up the pyramid. And look at someone like Tom, like the trajectory in China Tesla very similar to the trajectory of that in the finance department, Like these people came in very highly selected by Tesla and amongst all these very high high quality talents Tesla has, Tesla is extremely
good at promoting very very fast, very young talents. So as long as that machine is there. As an analyst looking at the stock, looking at the long term, even the medium term, I feel that the key man risk is what it is. We'll see, you know, in the next few months, Skipper of you know, they's anything more to know about the situation. But I feel a relatively confident we shouldn't meet excessively.
PF fair agree. New Street Research.
Always grateful for your time and your reaction to what was a surprise piece of news this morning.
Thank you.
Let's stick with Musk over the weekend. Elon posted on x formerly known as Twitter, that he's going to have an MRI of his neck and upper back and he's going to find out whether or not he'll need surgery. This, of course, ahead of a proposed cage fight with Meta's co founder Mark Zuckerberg joined me out of DC. Bloomberg's Jackie Davlos. You and I have been through all of the posts, all of the timelines, all of the ideas. What do we know is the latest about this proposed cage fight.
Well, and we know that cage fight is still up in the air, so our eager audience out there shouldn't put their beds in just yet. But what we do know is that Elon must sort of put the kebash on what's seemed to be an advancement in a proposed match between the two tech billionaires because of his injury to his upper neck and to his neck and upper back.
Now it seemed to be escalating earlier in the day, because when Elon Musk first posted that Sunday that the batch should be live stream on next and that these proceeds would be going to charity, Mark Zuckerberg actually responded to that and said, hey, look, I suggested that we have this on August twenty six. Haven't heard back, and so a physical match may not be playing out, but they're certainly throwing punches at each other on their respective platforms already.
You know, you and I cover technology, and the platforms are at the heart of this. You mentioned Zuckerberg's response threads being more reliable outside of the tech.
What do we know about the training that's going on, Like, is this real, Jackie? Are they really gearing up for this fight?
Well, you know, they've both been posting pictures of them training. We saw that post that Mark Zuckerberg had of him with this really heavy.
Vest that he was.
Bragging about how fast he could do this particular training session. I mean, they're really putting themselves out there in this way that you know, at least for Zuckerberg it's a little uncharacteristic of him.
For Elon Musk not so much.
But you know, at the end of the day, this isn't really about a cage match. I think what a lot of tech watchers out there realize is that the competition between the two really has intensified because of this tit for tat about the social platforms themselves, and so I think this is a culmination, probably a much more entertaining one that we normally see play out, but certainly one that's still a little.
Bit up in the air.
Ben Bos, Jackie Davlos, everything about the oxygen out of DC.
Thank you very much.
Now, look, we spent the last couple of weeks talking about the rebranding of Twitter two X. But what does Martin Grassa, the co designer a Twitter's original iconic bluebird logo, have to say about the change?
Have a listen to this.
I think with the letter form itself, it's a tough solve that they have to come up with because it's angular and sharp, it has an aggressive construction, and so I think the challenge that they'll have is how to define what X means, how to make it feel welcoming and approachable in its own way. And it's an incredible opportunity to have a single letter domain. I think there
is only a few of them in the world. And they really get a chance to sort of say the final letter in the alphabet the same way you know people think about the bird today. I think, you know, ten years ago, there wasn't this emotional attachment to the bird that we see as it starts.
To you know, pull away and change the X coming out here on Bloomberg Technology, check it.
Look at zoom shares.
We've been talking and asking is this the end of the remote work era? When the darling of the remote work era says to its staff, time to come back to the office. It's time to have a conversation that next.
This is Bloomberg.
Another piece of news that we're tracking here on Bloombow Technology, PayPal is launching a stable coin, the latest crypto payments push. What's so interesting about this It's the first by a large financial company and is significant joining us now who else Bloomberg Shnali Bassekale paypaler is like the og name in payments and then you follow in the modern era discussion around crypto. I'm not so surprised by this, but it is a significant piece of news.
Oh.
Absolutely, You and I talk about the PayPal mafia all the time. Everyone from elon Musk to Max Levchen, and so it's not surprising to see PayPal be the first really come out and make a stable coin announce They are also working with Paxos, which we know has been kind of a longer standing stable coin issuer and is regulated pretty heavily here in the United States, including with
the New York Department of Financial Services. So if they are trying to get something off the ground, to do it in a way that is already regulated, well known by the regulators, it makes a lot of sense, especially because ed if you think about the way that stable coins are used kind of as an on ramp off ramp, and kind of also here on the eve of the House Financial Services Committee really trying to proceed with a new bill here for stable coin legislation. So a lot
of movement on that front. Very unclear what the endgame is, but as we know, PayPal has four hundred and thirty million users here that are right for the taking. When you think about the movement over to digital payments.
So the basics of stable coins a cryptotoken that's pegged to a real asset like the dollar, the US dollar, is that the case with PayPal stable coin? What are the specifics of it.
Yeah, it's fully backed by US dollar deposits, treasuries, cash equivalents. I think it will be interesting to see how that works over time and who else they work with. I think about what STA Circle has done, for example, and Circle also has used Blackrock to manage that kind of treasury of cash and cash equivalents. As we've seen over time, that has been a very interesting thing to even look under the hood. Because initially they had kept money at
Silicon Valley Banks soil Coon Valley Bank hat failed. They worked more with Blackrock to figure out how to move some of that money. So to the point that you're making the linkages here to the US financial system will be interesting to keep an eye on continuously and again the partners.
That they have.
The other reason I think about Circle so heavily is because of the way that coinbase, for example, uses Circle and USDC to really manage their kind of cash holdings here as almost a proxy, given that it's backed so much by very stable liquid US dollars and treasuries. The expansion of how PayPal works with the existing crypto ecosystem in that way, how much can you use PayPal stable given that it is back kind of just by treasuries
and cash. Will more companies like a coin base feel comfort in doing that and work with PayPal in the future at a greater scale is a pivotal question.
Well, quickly, we just showed a fantastic chart, mister director. Bring it back up up there you go. You look at the market for stable coin. It is clearly dominated by one name, Shanale. Very quickly break down the market for US.
Yeah, very clearly. Tether is a big part of the stable coin market. And I think you have to look at this ed because twenty one percent is USDC as well. How much are people using stable coins inside of the United States versus outside of the United States. PayPal is still a US domiciled company and so there is a
rational for them to be working with past paxos. We've seen issues with other stable coins through paxos, like Finance and so but paxos again has been a very trusted issue in the United States, with a lot of US adoption, in.
Particular Bloomberg Shnali bassec all things crypto out of New York. All right, So the push to get tech workers back in the office continues. This time the back to office announcement coming from the darling of the work from home era Zoom to discuss Thingboks Brady Ford here with us.
This was one I did not see coming. What is Zoom saying?
Yeah, Zoom said pretty much everybody else has said, which is we're gonna work better in the office, come back in two days a week.
It'll be great see your colleagues.
And what's kind of funny about that to a lot of people is right that Zoom facilitated work from home. Without them, we'd probably all be using Skype. But yeah, I think what's interesting here, though, is that Zoom will say that this actually aligns pretty closely with our current strategy.
They recognize that a lot of companies are going back at least part time, and so they've really worked on developing software for in office collaboration hybrid and so they figure to make these tools and make some more sense for their workers too to be in the office at least part of the time.
The reality of this story, Brady, as you've written about, is that in the post pandemic world, Zoom's really struggled to keep its pace of growth. Tell me about the reasons why.
Absolutely well, most tech companies ended up peaking around late twenty twenty one. Zoom peaked a fall year earlier in October twenty twenty because there was just this elation when everybody said we're working for home forever. We have companies all over the place, I mean, Salesforce said we're never going back to the office, and it became clear that some of these old ways of working will create back and that's really what's dented Zoom. I mean, they have
a fantastic single product. Most people will say it's better than the competition, but it's hard to make a successful platform company on one product, especially when most people who want that product have already purchased it.
Let's be clear about the CEO, Eric Dwan's position on this, though he still believes in hybrid working.
Yeah, and that's what's interesting. I think a lot of companies that are increasingly pushing workers back to the office will say we're staying hybrid. The question is whether that number continues to creep up.
Right?
Does it start at two and then next year it's three, next year it's four. Are we in a three days a week white collar work world forever? You know, if you look at finance Obviously some places are five days a week. Even sales positions at a lot of tech companies are getting to four days a week now. So the question is whether it stabilizes hybrid or it's just going to continue creeping back to the old ways.
Brody Forward coming to us live from an office or office in New York City. I mean, are there any other tech companies that you cover that are taking a similar approach that have recalled staff in recent weeks?
Well, here's an interesting one. Amazon, because a lot of tech companies said, hey, if you live near an office, you have to go because a lot of hiring was totally remote in the pandemic. Amazon took a step to say that if you don't live near an office, you gotta move, you gotta come back. And to me, that was an unprecedented step within the big techies. Again, if you look at finance or others, my guess has been a little bit harder for a while now.
Bombos, Brady Ford always good to catch up. Thank you out in New.
York Artisiz Patrick Drahi said he felt quote betrayed and deceived by a small group of individuals, including one of his oldest colleagues, This was in response to a criminal corruption probe in Portugal focused on key figures connected to his telecommunity communications empire. Here with the latest out of Lisbon Bloomberg's Enriqualmeida. So let's go back to the beginning. How did some Autists officials become caught up in a Portuguese probe about the company.
Hi ed Well?
This all began last month when Portuguese police searched about nightighty homes and offices in Portugal and later detained the co founder of artist Romandu Preidra and three other people for question. Now, prosecutors believe that Pareta and a close group of people rigged procurement contracts at Altis's portual in a way that harmed the group's.
Own companies for their own benefit.
Pareida is considered Drahi's right hand man, which has raised fears that such practices could be taking place in other countries where the group operates. The irony of this all is that Altis has earned a name for itself here in Portugal for cutting costs.
A union leader told me.
Last month that when Altis spot Portugal Telecom, the country's biggest telecom company, Peda told units that he had to cut about five thousand jobs, that's about half of the workforce.
Now he suspected, along.
With a group of other people, of allegedly setting up businesses that want supply contracts from Altese to line up his pockets.
Altis in Europe is just a telecom's giant now, right, The question is, Henry, what happens if this escalates beyond Portugal to other European countries or even the US.
Well, that's the key question here.
Altis has alleged to be a victim of foul play and that the case for now is limited to Portugal, but the fact that one of its co founders is under house arrest has raised concerns of poor governance elsewhere, and the investigation couldn't need spread to other countries where it operates, like France.
Or the US.
One alarm bell has been the dismissal of Altis USA chief procurement officer Yossi venture Trids, who is prayed as son in law. Yossi and his wife Gael made headlines in two thousand and two for buying a seventy million apartment in Manhattan. Now, if authorities in the US get involved, Altiace could face potential fines poor governance, but the biggest
concern for now is Altis's huge debt pile. The company's debt has belonged to more than sixty million after years of aggressive acquisition at the same time getting more preentive.
Yep, no, I'm sorry to cut you off with short on time and read, but thank you for your on the ground reporting at Lisbon will continue to track the story. Welcome back to Bloomberg Technology. Ed love Low here in San Francisco. The single name that I'm watching though halfway through the program soft Bank in Japan. You look at the parent group, SoftBank Group down nine ten to one percent, but kind of paired its losses. We get their earnings very late night West Coast time early hours of Tuesday
morning East Coast time. All focus on Vision Fund expected to return to profitability after five quarters of losses in that Vision Fund.
What's going to drive the rebound?
Bloomberg's Isabelle Lee with me now with the latest Isabelle. This is an artificial intelligence story.
It definitely is ed and is it even a surprise? AI is really what's going to fuel the rally or the soft rebound? Rather modest rebound, however you want to call it. But this is a big deal considering that the Soft Fund Vision Fund, which is a venture capital arm of Soft Fund, have seen losses in the past five quarters so to the tune of forty eight billion. So this quarter, if it sees modest gains, it'll be good. And obviously it's written by the AI rally. You've corvered
it in this show. AI rally has just fueled all indexes across the board NASA one hundred, so it's biggest record ever from January to June. And the Vision funds public holding.
It's kind of a big firm.
Kind of is probably not the best word, because it's one point one, it's billion. It's public holdings as of the June quarter, and among the companies that invests in our door Dash Grab Holdings, which also saw double digit gains this year, and it also has a steak in China's ted Global, So they're really banking on that AI rally and this is one of the concrete examples that it lifts the valuation of a fund higher.
The other story we're tracking so closely here on Bloomberg Technology is what happens to Softbanks chip unit on the chip designer. We know that an IPO is likely in September, a month from now, we have a good gauge of the valuation.
How big a factor is that.
A lot of attenda on that actually, because ARM is looking to raise around ten billion for evaluation of around sixty to seventy billion, so that's pretty big. And if this happens, ARMS debut will be the biggest following Ali Baba and Metta. And you know that this has been a big story this year. Other than AI, it's been chips.
Everything has been about chips. So soft Bank is really banking on this, and if it happens, it's going to be a big deal for background Vision Fund launch in twenty seventeen, and it has investments including Apple and Qualcom. So if ARM comes true, if it does go public, which is a loss by the way to UK because they initially said they would list there but now they filed confidentially in the US, it would be a win probably for SoftBank. Now we don't know how much SoftBank
will stell its sell. It's sick when it comes to the IPO, but still we must be guessing that it must.
Be substantial Plambase Isabelle Lie, my good friend out in New York, across everything Asia tech and the importance for markets.
Thank you very much.
Now up next, ROW, it's the all in one finance and investment management platform for businesses. It's now integrating our official intelligence into its services. ROW unveiling one click AP to help input data in seconds that will normally take finance teams.
Ours.
Joining us from New York is ROW CEO Everett Cook. This is interesting because what you're doing is at the heart of the debate of where AI disrupts. Does it aids jobs or does it displace jobs? But just start by explaining what your AI powered tool does.
Thank you, Ded, It's great to be here, absolutely so.
Row is an all on one finance platform that means we combine products like banking, expense management, corporate cards, and accounts payable, which is the newest solution that we launched this week. We're infusing AI into all of our products, starting with AP because we believe it contributes to a better user experience and ultimately takes people out of the tdum of manual data entry.
For us, we don't believe that this is a job.
We believe that it frees up finance teams to ultimately be strategic and.
Add value to the organizations that they work for.
How much of your decision to do this was driven by people just coming to you and saying, we need some help. We actually need AI to do something that's useful for us a lot.
I mean that conversation wasn't about AI, but it was about you know, the finance team spending up to thirty percent of their time entering data and processing payments in a very manual way still today in twenty twenty two, twenty twenty three. So we understood these problems, and we understood the technology shifts that were happening with AI, and for us, it seemed like a very logical solution to apply to solving this very pervasive and.
Meaningful problem.
Your products and services are targeted at the CFO, finance lead, the finance team, how do you assess their competence their understanding of artificial intelligence?
You know, people out.
There trying to upskill as CFOs learn more about AI and why it's important for them.
That's a great question.
I think CFOs all around the world are trying to upscale all the time.
I think, what's What's important.
Here, though, is that they don't necessarily need to truly learn about AI to reap the benefits of it. It's going to immerse itself in all of the products that they probably use. Us as a you know, as a technology company, we're embedding it in so many products to just make everything.
Much better for the end user.
But I think that there are you know, leading edge CFOs and finance teams are definitely learning as much as they can about this new technology.
Are you able to quantify the financial benefit of automating these functions? How much time money does it save a company on average?
So we were able to reduce sort of the typical payment system payment process, which includes interpreting, checking, validating, and scheduling are payable and managing that with any payment method down from around twenty clicks to a round two.
We call the product one click ap We're going to.
Get it to one because this is really important for those organizations that may not sound like a lot, but you multiply that by one hundred, one thousand processes per month or per week and it really adds up.
What about your company? Ever, I believe you raise this series B going all the way back to December twenty twenty one. Do you have any more financing needs or capital needs.
We raise a meaningful Series B at the end of twenty twenty one. We were back by amazing investors. You know, we're continuing to put our heads down and bill.
All right, Row CEO Everett Cook, thank you very much for your time. They're coming up here on Bloomberg Technology.
It is our VC.
Spotlight Sarah Guile, founder of Conviction AI firm, very focused on artificial intelligence software three point zero. She's going to join us. Next familiar face here on Bluebow Technology. This is Bloomberg. But before we go, quick look at shares of block trade and higher by about half a percentage point.
Head's key numbers. This is Bloomberg.
Let's shift the technology focus seven thousand miles east to Israel. We've just been speaking exclusively with Prime Minister Benjamin Netten Yahoo about the nation's status as a tech club. He says his government is working hard to benefit from the AI boom.
Have listen.
There's noise in the short term markets, there's clarity in the long term markets. I mean, now, Amazon just invests seven billion in cloud services year. Why are they doing that? Because they know something I'm going to do. What I'm organizing is government policy and the government board with money to make us or one of the three top AI powers on the world.
That was Israel's Prime Minister benjaminette Nia, who's speaking with us this past Sunday. Let's keep the conversation on AI going in today's VC Spotlight.
Joining us this Monday.
Sarahwuile, founder of Conviction, early stage venture capital firm focus heavily on AI and software three point zero.
Sarah, of course, a former partner.
At Greylock, described as quote overly direct, and also the co host of the No Priors podcast. Welcome back to Bloomberg Technology, Sarah.
Good to see you, Ed, Thanks for having me.
So, I want to start on a data point that we've been going over a little bit on the show this past couple of weeks. In the first quarter of the year, at least almost half of venture backing for AI startups went to startups here in the city of San Francisco. Do you recognize that as being a genuine trend, the concentration of AI talent here in the city.
Yeah.
I think it's a reflection of how early we are in this market. There is great engineering and entrepreneurial talent all around the world. I've been on the boards of startups, you know, with Israeli founders, European founders, all around the United States. But at this particular moment, AI and this generation of it is very early, and a lot of the talent that was sort of working on the frontier of this technology was focused in a few large research labs, and those labs were staffed.
In San Francisco and London mainly.
So I do think that, you know, the AI boom has benefited from that research talent and is partly also to do with sort of the renaissance of San Francisco.
I asked you that because you and I've spent time together in your offices. You know, you launch Conviction and you open the physical office space that since last we spoke, you also launched conviction ebed, essentially an accelerator for AI startups. Tell me about that, what prompted the move.
So we think this is a unique moment in time.
As we were just talking about, this is a very early stage of the AI market, and we want to bring people together at this frontier of technology is we think they are solving a lot of new problems, and some of those problems are very common, right, And so an example might be hardware and infrastructure is hard again for startups thank to the thanks to the cloud players, they haven't been hard for most startups for a long time. But if you are a company that needs to train
or serve your own models, that's very challenging, right. And so you know, people talk about the AI GPU crunch, and so one of the things that we were really trying to do is focus on the set of challenges that AI native companies face, bring people together who want to work at the vanguard, and then also make it
possible for companies to experiment, right. And so we're giving people enough capital to get going one hundred and fifty thousand dollars on very friendly terms, and then partnering with Microsoft Open AI and Thropic and base Time in order to sort of make it possible for people to experiment
as well from the hardware side. And so I think it's in part because we think this is a really special moment in time we want to bring together some of that vanguard community, and in part because we think we can bring our network together and people will solve unique problems together.
So today's actually the last.
Day of application. So AI entrepreneurs, I hope you'll apply.
Well, let let's linger on that for a moment. Then what is it that you're looking for? You know, if you are going to get a new wave of applicants that are watching Bloomberg Technology right now, how do they set themselves apart? What is it you're seeking to on Earth?
Yeah, I think the fundamental thing that we are looking for with any entrepreneur, besides the core entrepreneurial traits of you know, grit, the enthusiasm and deep understanding of a particular problem space, is actually experimentation today, like openness to new ideas and new experiences, and I think a more expansive view of the markets that can be disrupted with AI, and then sort of deep understanding of how the research
and technology apply. I think one of the most exciting things about the opportunity to us is the fact that we don't look at the markets that are available to AI is just traditional software companies. Like some of the most interesting companies in AI today. And I'm biased because these are some of our portfolio companies as well, but you know, if you look at companies like Harvey in the legal space or mid journey in the image generation space.
Those were not hotbeds for software in as verticals prior, right, And so we're really excited about people who you know, are experts in their domain and then also are thinking creatively about these applications versus sort of just expecting that these next generation of companies will be direct replacement for incumbents.
You know, convictions really focused on the early stage. But you know, I know you and l Add on the No Prize podcast have names from the world of AI working at some of the biggest and most mature technology companies to discuss some of the broad themes. What are the advantages of focusing on young, early startups rather than you know, there's more mature sometimes megacap tech names that are still pumping money into into AI development.
Well, I'm sure there's an updated increased number for Q two, but I think your viewers would definitely know in Q one a fifth of the S and P five hundred mentioned AI in their earnings calls, right, And so I do think since these starting gun of last November, technologists at companies of any scale recognize the opportunity and the risk,
and definitely some are benefiting from it, right. You know, we see even in our mean alads, more advanced portfolios, or even in public companies, there are founders and CEOs who are taking advantage of the opportunity and motivating their teams to work with more speed and velocity than they
ever have. Incumbents have always had the advantages of distribution, like relationships with customers, and then like very you know, large resources right engineering teams, access to infrastructure, for example. But I think these times of massive disruption are actually
more advantage to startups. I think there's a lot of discussion amongst investors about access to data to train and fine tune models, but the data you want for model fine tuning and training is actually very specific, and incumbents
often don't have it. So I think it's a you know, it's a race like many other technology shifts, where startups are trying to build the best product and build distribution and incumbents have the distribution advantage and are trying to figure out how quickly they can adapt to this new change.
Last October, you.
Came out and confirmed your first one hundred million dollar fund, and you got going quite quickly, and we talked about the physical space that you have the offices, but just share with our audience, Sarah, what it's been like building your own firm from scratch, where you've been able to make progress quickly, what the challenges have been as well.
Yeah, I am reminded what it is like to be a founder. It's a lot of work, I'll be honest,
but I'm really excited. I think the timing of our fund launch was we launched a publicly last October and chat GPT was released to the public in I think November, and so I can't say I was not surprised by how strong the consumer and enterprise reaction was to that, where like, this is the race year to incorporate AI into your existing products as an company, right, And so I'm positively surprised by how many entrepreneurs and how much
great opportunity we are seeing. And I think, you know, we have a I think we have a reputation for domain expertise and network here and we want to go work with some of the very best companies. I'm very proud of the entrepreneurs already in the portfolio, but I'd say the amount of opportunity is also a challenge, right, We're hiring investors, and I think it will only grow
from here. So I'd say perhaps the challenges look a little bit more like any scaling company that doesn't quite have enough peace because its market has arrived quickly.
Sarah Grau, conviction is so great to have you back on the program at I guess the digital coll face of building a venture firm but also investing in new companies in the field of AI.
Thank you very much.
As the iPhone fifteen debut approaches, Apple finally admitting the industry is facing a smartphone slow down here in the US, presents a challenge for the next iPhone, which promises to be the biggest updates of the device in three years. Here's one pac more Bloombos, Mark German and Mark you wrote your power on over the weekend. Actually, some new details about the timing of iPhone fifteen. We're expecting an event, a launch. When do they take place.
I'm expecting Apple to announce the iPhone fifteen the week after Labor Day, so either on Tuesday September twelfth or Wednesday, September thirteenth. The phones will then go on pre order that Friday, and then the week after the following Friday on September twenty second, I expect the new models to
go on sale. Now, this is not necessarily groundbreaking, This follows the cadence of typical Apple releases, but notably this event is happening about a week later than last year, but it's still within their normal timeframe of early September to mid September.
The question, before we get to the comments from executives about slow down is what is the iPhone fifteen going to bring us? How is it different from prior generations Based on your reporting.
Yeah, I think this iPhone fifteen launch is actually going to be the most significant upgrade to the iPhone since the iPhone twelve launched in twenty twenty. You know, typically they've been doing bigger upgrades to the profhones the last few years, and that will continue, but the baseline iPhone fifteen will be a pretty nice update as well. So
I'll start with the cheaper bones. The fifteen will get the same forty eight megapixel back camera that the fourteen pro got last year, so a really big upgrade on those lower end phones. And then they're going to move from the notch to the dynamic island on the fifteen and fifteen plus as well. So that's going to be a nice improvement that people on the pro phones got last year. Now moving onto the pro devices, there's going
to be an entirely new design. They're going to keep that sort of matt frosted glass back, but around the sides of the phone. The band that goes around the phone right now with sort of that shiny fingerprint full stainless steel band. Right that material is trying to titan It's a brush titanium. It looks a bit nicer, a bit more premium, but it also could make the phone a bit lighter. There's also going to be a much dinner border around the screen.
All right.
Bloomber is Martgum and check on power on these aecutives saying two quarters of slow down in the US. Does the iPhone fifteen change the trajectory that does it? To this edition of Bloomberg Technology coming up in the next hour. Kathe Wood of ARC joins the crew on the one PM from San Francisco.
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